


Servants and Kings

by sagewind



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Dehumanization, Discrimination, Gen, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Levi Ackerman-centric, Marley (Shingeki no Kyojin), PTSD, Potential Erwin/Levi, Pre-Marley Arc (Shingeki no Kyojin), Spoilers, Titan Shifter Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), warriors - Freeform, will update tags as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:13:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29909892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagewind/pseuds/sagewind
Summary: Levi sighs. He closes his eyes for just a brief moment.Follow the plan. Reclaim the Founding Titan; kill the devils, and prove that he’s not one of them. Go home. Live in peace.Nothing’s ever that simple.Following Annie's failure to catch Jaegar during the Scout Regiment's expedition in Trost, it is time for Levi to step out of the shadows and hand himself over to the scouts.Or,An au in which Levi is a titan-shifter and a Warrior, and joins the Scout Regiment. However, things are never simple, and he finds himself torn between two worlds.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS.  
> There will be many, many SPOILERS in this fic. All of the (immediate) titan shifters are revealed by the end of this prologue. Everything beyond the walls is discussed pretty much immediately as well. So, if you aren't up to date with the end of season 3/season 4 of the anime, everything before then is going to be discussed and approached. Don't read this if you don't want spoilers. 
> 
> I will add: this is following the anime rather than the manga, so I apologise to any manga readers for any inconsistencies between the two. 
> 
> Also, this is just a prologue. Future chapters will be longer!

From the shadows, he watches as titans descend upon Annie Leonhart and tear her apart. The Survey Corps stand around her, watching on in horror and despair at losing her. Slowly, her body crumbles apart until she falls to the floor, hidden amongst the crowd of titans.

“We’re just leaving her?” cries Section Commander Hanji, trying to catch another glimpse of the shifter.

“There’s nothing to be done,” says the Commander, voice tinged with disappointment and irritation. He sheathes his blades and looks away. “Come on. We shouldn’t wait for the titans to look for something else to eat. Regroup and we’ll begin our return to the walls.”

“Yes, sir,” mumbles Hanji. With one last, longing look at the titan dogpile, she turns. The air rings with the metallic hiss of their ODM-gear. 

Levi steps forwards, weaving through the trees. With ease he bats aside the titans on Annie’s remains until he can find her - there. She’s encased herself using her titan hardening ability, but she’s still awake and staring out at him as he lifts her up. The pure titans don’t notice, continuing to ravage her steaming remains, and he makes his retreat silently, carrying the titan shifter in his hands.

As he walks through the trees, cracks begin to appear in the casing and it shatters. Annie sits up, brushing crystal shards off of herself, and then she looks up.

“Levi,” she says, narrowing her eyes. She can only just see him; see the odd glimmer of his silhouette, the way the trees shift unnaturally as he passes them, like the way the air dances above the heat of a fire.

He has no fear of being seen by the Survey Corps - not out here, since he went in the opposite direction that they went - so he lets his camouflage slip away until his titan form is visible. Annie relaxes a little bit at being able to see him.

“I couldn’t catch Jaeger,” she says, as if he doesn’t know. She’s always been good at concealing her emotions but he can see them now; hear the tremor in her voice; the anguish, the defeat, the frustration.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, voice rumbling through his titan’s chest. “We have plenty of time.”

“I was so close,” says Annie. 

“Focus on next time,” he tells her. They’ve reached the spot where she’s left her gear, a particular tree, and he sets her down on one of the branches. She hops off his hand and immediately goes towards her gear, strapping it on. 

“I’ll go after him again. I have enough energy. I killed enough of them - they can’t fight back.”

“No,” says Levi, much to her surprise. She looks up, eyes questioning. Levi turns his head, facing the direction the Survey Corps took off in. “New plan. I’m coming in.”

“ _What_?”

As easy as breathing, he reaches for his titan power, camouflaging his skin until he’s once more invisible. Annie doesn’t startle but her eyes narrow a little.

“I’m joining the Survey Corps,” Levi says. Invisible, his voice seems to come from everywhere, carried forth as a whisper on the wind. He can see the way it unsettles her - it always unsettles everyone he talks to this way. Perhaps it’s just the instinctual fear of an invisible enemy. 

He doesn’t wait around to see her reaction. It’s a new plan, though they all had been aware of the possibility of Levi having to actually step in, rather than continuing to work in the shadows, as is his and his titan’s speciality. Now though, with the appearance of Jaeger’s titan, it’s been decided that this is what has to be done.

So, he turns and leaves Annie to sort herself out and get herself back to the walls. Invisible and silent, he moves like the wind through the trees, the only trace of him being a rustle of leaves generated by the breeze carried from his movement.

He follows after the Survey Corps, unbeknownst to them, as they all regroup. Without Annie after them again, and all the pure titans falling still as the sun sets, the Survey Corps is able to settle into a small village for the night; able to tend to their casualties and compose themselves. Levi sits less than a mile from the village all night, until morning comes and they all begin to move again. They’ll reach the walls today.

He shadows them on the way back, until the timing is right. There are some trees nearby, small and scattered around, the first cluster in a while. Their gear will be able to use them. It won’t be ideal for them, but it’ll be enough to give them some confidence in attacking him, and make it easier for them to actually take him down.

There’s enough distance between them that him dropping his camouflage won’t be seen as appearing from thin air, but his sudden appearance will get their attention. His unusual appearance should tip them off to the fact that he is like their dubbed Female Titan and they won’t kill him, but extract him from his nape and hold him hostage. If that doesn’t work, perhap singling Jaeger out will. 

(He’s on a cart, still currently unconscious. He doesn’t know how to handle his titan ability at all. It’s pathetic.)

Levi sighs. He closes his eyes for just a brief moment. 

Follow the plan. Reclaim the Founding Titan; kill the devils, and prove that he’s not one of them. Go home. Live in peace. 

Nothing’s ever that simple.

He opens his eyes and shakes off his camouflage. Nobody notices his appearance immediately, but there’s a few miles between them, and his titan is silent if he’s not actively trying to be loud.

So, Levi makes noise.

He starts sprinting towards the Survey Corps, and he lets out a scream, ear-bleeding and haunting. It hurts his throat, but it sure as hell gets their attention. He can smell the spike in their fear as they watch him advance rapidly on them. 

“Titan!”

“Coming from the rear!”

“Sir, it’s - is that-”

“Commander-”

He bats the first scout away from him with ease when they fly towards him. He bats at the second one but misses on purpose.

“Commander, I think it’s a shifter,” calls Hanji, voice mixed with determination, excitement, and a hint of fear. As if to agree with her, Levi lets out another bone-shaking scream, and makes for Eren. He ignores the weight of two specific gazes on him. It was a surprise to Annie; it’s a surprise for Reiner and Bertholdt, too.

The Commander, voice like steel, barks out his commands just like Levi wanted him to. Don’t kill him; cut him out of the nape like they would Eren.

When they descend on him, Levi lets them. He closes his eyes as blades sink into his flesh and submits to the embrace of darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you liked this so far, feel free to leave a kudos or a comment, I would greatly appreciate it! If you have any questions, feel free to ask! This is my first fic here and I'm excited to share it with you! I have a few chapters pre-written, but updates will be slow as I continue to write.   
> Future chapters will be longer than this one! 
> 
> Just to clarify in regards to Levi's titan:  
> \- he is not one of the canon titans. I added a new one just for him, so the rest are still here and who they are in canon. Levi is simply new and has his own powers.


	2. Chapter 2

Levi wakes up, unsurprisingly, tied up. 

His wrists are shackled together, with another chain leading from his wrists to the wall beside him. They’re made of stone, the walls around him - old bricks with cracks and cobwebs around them. 

The room is dark, and cold, and damp. It’s a cell. There’s a thin window at the top of the back wall - barred, too small for him to fit through, covered in mold. The front wall is solely made of bars, allowing him to see out into the corridor - not that that does much. It’s dimly lit and from where he’s sitting, on the small cot in the corner of the cell, he can’t see anything more than the identical cells on the opposite side of the hallway.

It seems that his plan of infiltrating the Survey Corps has succeeded.

He eyes the heavy shackles on his wrists. 

He has a plan. It’ll take him a few days to gain some trust from the Survey Corps and until then he will have to simply remain put in this cell, as much as he hates the idea. 

He wonders, briefly, how Reiner and Bertholdt are doing. It has been months since his last update from them, and they hadn’t been expecting him to make an appearance, outing himself to the Scouts and letting them catch him. He’s at least a little relieved to be able to see them again - they’ve been working here for years and he can’t imagine the toll it’s taken on them. They’re just kids, too. At least Levi’s older. He’s been at this longer than them, and he knows how to take care of himself better than they do.

He’ll just have to find a way to talk to them later. For now though, he has a plan to follow.

He sits in his cell, biding his time until he hears a door open at the other end of the hallway, followed quickly by a few pairs of footsteps. He perks up immediately, sitting upright and staring expectantly at his door. 

Three people come into his view. The Commander leads the others, and Hanji and Mike follow just behind them. They fit the profiles Reiner and Bertholdt had given him the last few times they’d met. Levi can’t help but feel at least a little intimidated, finally being face-to-face with one of them.

 _The devils of Paradis_ , he thinks, suppressing a grimace and a shudder. Instead, he inches backwards on his cot, shying away from them. 

“You’re awake,” states the Commander. “You’ve been out for a while now.”

Levi presses his lips together. He doesn’t actually know how long he’s been out for, though it’s not much of a concern for him. He inclines his head in a nod and looks between the trio. When he doesn’t say anything, the blond keeps speaking.

“I have some questions for you, as you might imagine, but I’ll make your situation clear first. I don’t want you misunderstanding me.” He takes a step closer to the cell; his icy eyes pierce right through him. Levi doesn’t need to pretend to be uncomfortable.

“I am the only thing standing between you and execution,” he says. “I highly suggest that you cooperate with me. Do you understand?”

Levi wonders if this is all worth it. If he should have taken his chance before reaching the walls and just ran. He could have stayed hidden for a long time. He could have found some semblance of peace for himself, if at least for a little time.

It’s too late to think about such things now, though. He narrows his eyes at Erwin and asks, voice quiet, “who are you? Where am I?”

The Commander pauses. His eyes narrow as he studies him, trying to figure out whether or not Levi is lyng. Thankfully, Levi has learned how to craft a mask for himself, and it slips on as easily as his lies slip out of his mouth, and the Commander must conclude that he’s being honest.

“My name is Commander Erwin Smith, of the Survey Corps regiment,” he states. “You are currently being held in our custody, in our prison.”

Levi pulls a face of confusion. The chains on his shackles clack together as he moves, holding his hands to his chest. 

Erwin asks, “what’s your name?”

He pauses. His eyes slip to the side, his brows furrow, and his lips move around a silent sound, as if searching for his name that should come easily to him. After another beat he says, “Levi.”

“Levi,” echoes the Commander. He doesn’t seem entirely impressed with the show Levi is putting on, but he does seem at least a little curious. Or perhap Levi is just reading him wrong. The Commander is a hard man to read. 

“Levi _what_?” urges Hanji, coming up to the bars and quirking an eyebrow. “It’s a simple question, really, and I suggest you start talking before I make you.”

Levi doesn’t quite fancy the manic look in her eyes. Reiner and Bertholdt told him about her, too - close to the Commander and crazy, but not to be underestimated. He looks quickly away from her and repeats, “Levi. Just Levi.”

Erwin makes a slight movement, signalling Hanji to step back, and then he turns to the man on his other side. “Go look for a _Levi,_ ” he says. With a nod, the man slips away, but not without letting his gaze linger on Levi, as if silently implying a threat. Levi hears it clear enough and looks away.

“Levi,” says the Commander, drawing his attention back to him. He closes the gap between himself and the bars separating them. “Tell me what your goal was. Tell me why you need Eren Jaeger so badly.”

Jaeger is just a kid too, he thinks. A kid who’s gotten himself drawn into shit he doesn’t even know about. The dislike Levi has for him has begun to be tainted by fatigue. He’s tired of fighting and he wonders how fighting a kid is going to bring the end to his life-long battle. Deep down he knows it won’t, but a small part of him is too desperate to give up. 

He brings his gaze back up to meet the Commander’s. “I don’t… understand,” he says slowly, eyes narrowing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know what we’re talking about?” says Hanji, skepticism dripping from her words. She looks rapidly between him and Erwin. To resist reaching out and grabbing Levi between the bars like he presumes she wants to, she folds her arms over her chest and huffs.

“I don’t know who Eren Jaeger is,” Levi insists. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know who you are.”

The Commander’s eyes harden. He holds Levi’s gaze, searching his face to find any traces of a lie. Levi doesn’t back down from the challenge in his eyes. He’s not afraid of the Commander nor is he afraid of being found guilty of lying. He knows he won’t be. He has too much riding on this that he can’t afford to be found out. 

Erwin’s eyes jump back to Hanji. The scientist turns her back to Levi, leaning against the bars of his cell, and murmurs quietly to Erwin. The Commander looks over her shoulder to Levi and says, “seven hours ago, you attacked my soldiers outside of the walls.”

Levi’s eyes widen with faked shock, lips parting a little. He knows that Erwin picks up on it despite the way he glosses over it and continues to talk. “Less than a day after an attack by another titan-shifter. I have no doubts that this was mere coincidence. Again, I suggest that you cooperate and answer my questions, Levi. We will find out either way.”

The threat falls empty on Levi’s ears. He knows they can’t, and won’t, kill him; they need him - they _think_ they need him. Levi feels no pressing sense of urgency at the idea of being locked away down here either, if that’s what it takes. Nonetheless, he maintains his facade and he shakes his head.

“I don’t remember attacking you,” he states, looking between them. “I don’t want to harm anyone. I’m… sorry. I can’t answer your questions.” Looking vaguely disturbed, he lowers his voice and asks, “did I hurt anyone?”

Despite how both Erwin and Hanji remain quiet for a moment, Levi already knows the answer to his question. He didn’t kill anyone; the soldiers he waved away might have gained a bruise or two, but nothing more. 

Hanji turns back around to face him, scrutinising him. “You don’t remember… the attack?” She asks. “What _do_ you remember?”

Levi pauses. His lips part and what he says isn’t an entire lie.

“I heard… a scream. It was like something cutting through a dream. And here I am.”

He blinks, shaking the memory of Annie’s scream from him. He hadn’t heard a titan scream like that before and he wonders if Annie had truly been afraid in that moment. The memory must show on his face, because the two scouts seem to buy it easily. Hanji turns back to Erwin and murmurs, “the female titan’s scream called titans to her… perhaps it had an effect on titan-shifters as well.”

Erwin’s lips press together in a tight line and, finally, he looks away from Levi and nods his acknowledgement to Hanji, then nods down the hallway in the direction that they came. Hanji clicks her heels together, gives Levi one last look, a mix of curiosity and wariness, and then she leaves. 

Erwin makes to follow her but lingers for just a moment. “I suggest that you try to remember what happened, Levi,” he says, and leaves without another glance. Levi is left alone in his cell, staring at the spot where he had just been.

He can’t read Erwin. He had been warned of the Commander, of course, and whilst he isn’t afraid of him, he is cautious of having underestimated him. He can’t tell just how much of his story Erwin believes and what he might be thinking about Levi. He knows that Hanji is curious, but with what he’s been told about her, he isn’t surprised. 

However, shackled as he is, he can do nothing but wait for whenever his next visit is. He settles onto his cot and tries to ignore the damp walls around him and the mold by the little window; the little _drip, drip, drip_ of water accumulating in the corner of the room.

* * *

The next visit occurs later that night, when the sky outside the little window in his cell is dark like in. He sits up when a door far down the corridor creaks open and footsteps come his way again. He can’t quite tell what time it is, but the din from outside has fallen quiet and every so often he can hear the floorboards above his head creak and groan, but even that has stopped recently. He can only assume that the scouts have retired for the day. 

The original trio of Erwin, Hanji and the other man whom Levi can’t name just by sight, return, coming to stand in front of his cell door. Levi looks between them all. Erwin is the first to speak up.

“I’m going to ask if you have remembered anything you should tell us in these past few hours?” 

A beat passes and Levi shakes his head slowly. Erwin doesn’t look surprised.

“I don’t remember anything, and I don’t have a reason to lie to you. If you wanted me dead, or imprisoned, you’ve had plenty of time to do so with me. I never intended to hurt anyone - I must have gotten stuck in that form. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you anything else, because I don’t have anything else to tell,” he says, trying to come off as genuine as he can even if apologising to a person like Erwin Smith makes him want to grit his teeth. Surely they ought to be apologising to him, because it’s their fault he’s in this position in the first place; it’s their fault that he has to fight this fight, and it’s their fault that his life has been made a living hell. They ought to apologise to him. 

It’s the thought process Levi has had for a long time, but in the past few years he’s found it to be crumbling; the fire behind it dwindling down little by little, anger bleeding out. He almost wishes he could share the same fiery fury that the rest of the Warriors do, that their recruits do, but he just can’t. 

The Survey Corps need him alive and preferably not locked in jail, but they can keep him locked down in their own private prison for as long as they have to. Levi needs to gain their trust, and playing innocence and cooperation is his best bet at getting that. 

Erwin’s eyes bore into him, heavy and cold and unreadable. It feels as if he’s looking straight through Levi, right through his facade and lies and to his core. He wonders what kind of a man Erwin Smith is. Does he believe Levi’s story? And if not, is he willing to take a risk if he thinks that he might be able to get this situation to work for him? 

The lack of a response from him was unnerving. Coupled with his inability to really read Erwin and figure out what he was thinking, Levi’s patience was running out. He looks between the trio, trying to gauge where he stood currently with the others. He can probably play to Hanji’s curiosity - if what he’s been told about her is correct, then she should jump at the opportunity to work with another titan-shifter, especially one more experienced than Jaegar.

The other man with them is someone Levi can’t place. He’s stayed silent so far, a couple of steps behind Erwin and Hanji, always in his ODM-gear - probably just being used as some muscle, a silent threat. Levi doesn’t find him particularly intimidating but if the Commander believes him good enough to fight Levi single-handedly, then Levi will be on guard around him. 

He looks back at Erwin. “You want answers,” he says, quirking an eyebrow. “Well… if I remember anything, I’ll tell you. I didn’t mean to attack you and I can’t imagine it going well for me if I tried again, given…” he lifts his hands up, chains rattling, and then points a finger at the third man standing to the side. 

Erwin raises an eyebrow slightly. “You want to work with us?” He clarifies, evidently intrigued by the offer. Levi shrugs.

“Sure. Yeah. I’ll cooperate with you, so long as you don’t kill me. Or leave me to rot in a shitty prison cell.”

Hanji turns her back to him like she had done earlier, head tilting up to look at Erwin, probably telling him something quietly that Levi doesn’t catch. Erwin’s gaze lifts from her face to meet Levi’s, looking over Hanji’s shoulder.

“I can’t just let you roam free around here,” he states. “Either you are my prisoner or my soldier. I can agree to work with you if you’re my soldier.”

Levi wonders if he imagines the glint of a challenge in Erwin’s eyes. Whatever Erwin was thinking, though, didn’t matter at the moment; the exact offer that he wanted was dangling right in front of his face, and he had gotten it much easier than he had anticipated.

“I’m joining the Survey Corps, then,” he says slowly, as if testing the words. He looks at the manacles on his wrists, flexes his fingers and twists his hands, and then he peers back up at Erwin through narrowed eyes. “Alright,” he says. 

Erwin seems to look a little pleased, but he only responds with a slight nod of his head. Hanji brightens up almost immediately - the way she swings from cold intimidation to bubbly friendliness is mildly disorienting - and she turns back to face him, clapping her hands together.

“I’m sure it will be a pleasure working with you, Levi,” she says. He can almost see the cogs in her brain turning, churning out sadistic idea after idea on how to experiment on him and his titan. He tries not to let his imagination fill in the blanks. He’ll have time to set boundaries later - if that’s even something they’ll allow him to do. 

Erwin pulls a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocks the cell door, and then he steps inside. Levi isn’t afraid of him but he can’t help but watch him warily when he approaches. All the Commander does, however, is hold a hand out and looks pointedly at Levi’s. When Levi offers his own out, Erwin unlocks the shackles on his wrists and sets them on the cot, by Levi’s feet.

He takes a step back and says, “come on. I’ll show you to the showers and get you a uniform. Hanji, get a meal from the kitchen and bring it up to my office please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” says Hanji, then disappears down the corridor. As Erwin heads to the cell door, Levi hurries to get up onto his feet and follow him out. He can’t help but cringe at the chill of stone beneath his bare feet, and his shoulders tense when the other man follows behind Levi, silent as ever. With his height and build, he’s at least a little intimidating, but Levi knows he could take him down with ease. 

Erwin leads the way down the corridor and through a door that leads out of the prison. He assumes that they’re in the base of the Survey Corps, so he’s just relieved to see the halls empty as they walk through them. He tries to memorise the layout of the building but the halls are almost identical and he’s almost convinced that Erwin purposefully winds through random hallways just to confuse him. 

They end up outside the shower room though, and Erwin remains outside. The silent guy follows him in, though remains by the door and averts his eyes as Levi looks around, familiarising himself with the showers they have. He hesitates to undress with the soldier standing by the door. Instead of making a comment about him being a pervert like he wants to, he instead asks him, “who are you?”

The man’s nose twitches. “Mike,” he states, voice gruff and disinterested. His eyes don’t stray from where they’re trained on the wall, but he waves a hand in Levi’s vague direction. “Unless you’ve _forgotten_ how to work a shower, I suggest you get on with it.”

Levi huffs and looks away from him. He isn’t surprised at receiving suspicion, and it might be beneficial for him to continue to play up his innocence to seem more believable and trustworthy; however, the idea of pretending to be helpless and lost, reliant on the devils around him, and all but grovelling for them to believe and trust him is just something Levi is not going to do, now or ever. 

He strips off his clothes and sets them aside, and then he figures out how to work the shower. He’s all too eager to scrub off the dirt and grime clinging to his skin and hair. The hot water works some tension out of his muscles and stings the lingering burns on his face from his titan. 

Too soon, he has to turn off the shower and dry himself off. During his shower, Mike had brought in a uniform for him and hands it off to him before he can slip into his old clothes. It’s ill-fitting and he has to roll up the pants so that they don’t look ridiculous on him. 

When he’s done, Mike leads him back out and through more identical hallways, enough so that Levi almost gets a headache trying to memorise their route until he gives up. Their random pathing brings them to a halt in front of a door with a little plaque on it, declaring it the Commander’s office. Sure enough, when the door is opened Levi can see Erwin Smith sitting at a desk further into the room. He’s more focused on the paperwork in front of him than Levi and Mike’s appearance. A beat passes before he sets his pen down and looks up.

“Thank you, Mike. You can go now. Levi: please sit.” He gestures to the empty seat at the opposite side of his desk. Levi steps into the office and Mike steps out, closing the door behind him. Levi lowers himself into the seat opposite Erwin and doesn’t say anything as the Commander looks him up and down.

“Tomorrow we’ll take measurements to get you a better-fitting uniform,” he states, and looks back down at the paperwork in front of him. There’s a stack to his left and a file to his right, which he sorts the paper into. Closest to Levi on the desk is a tray of food. It doesn’t look all too different to the kind he’s used to. Levi eyes it and then focuses his attention on the Commander.

“I take it you wanted to talk to me,” he says. He’s sure the Commander has plenty of questions of his own and he’s mildly surprised he hasn’t jumped straight into interrogating Levi.

“I would like to ask you a couple of things first, yes,” he confirms. He scribbles something onto a piece of paper, turns it around, then slides it into the file and looks up at Levi. He makes a small gesture at the tray of food. “You should eat. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

Levi picked at the food slowly whilst Erwin did his paperwork in silence. It almost unnerved Levi. He expected Erwin to be more… alert. More on guard, around him. Did he not see Levi as a threat? 

Or perhaps this was simply to make him uncomfortable - and it did work. Finally though, just as Levi was finishing up his food when Erwin finally set his pen back down and leaned back in his chair. 

“For the time being, you will remain to sleep in one of the cells downstairs. I’m sure you understand the precaution. Once I feel confident that you can be trusted, I’ll have you moved to another room,” he says. His hands clasp together and rest on the desk.

“Sure thing,” utters Levi, laying down his cutlery. 

“In the morning, you’ll be brought along to the infirmary for a health check, where you’ll also have your measurements taken for a uniform. You’ll begin to work with Hanji, as I hope you’ll be able to provide some information on titan shifting. I’ll begin training with our ODM-gear later. I hope you’re a fast learner, Levi.”

“I suppose we’ll see,” he says, drumming his fingers along his thigh. Erwin hums a little.

“And I’m sure it won’t be long before Hanji insists on a trip out into the forest so that she can see your titan form in action. I’m inclined to agree. Is there anything you can tell me about your titan form? Or how you came to know that you could transform?”

Levi blinks at him. For a moment, the taste of copper appears in the back of his throat. “I… can’t recall anything specifically. It doesn’t feel like something new to me.”

“And if you were to guess?” Erwin asks. Levi sighs, glancing away. There’s a large window behind Erwin’s desk and he peers through it, at the sight of trees in the distance and a courtyard just outside. 

“I would guess that… it just happened,” he says with a shrug. “You already seem aware of this ability, though.”

“Eren Jaeger,” says Erwin, “is a soldier who possesses this ability. He only learned of it recently, however, and up until yesterday we had assumed that he was the only person capable of such a thing. He hadn’t known about this ability until it happened for the first time not long ago.”

“You mentioned him before,” comments Levi, looking back at him. “Along with a female titan.”

“Another titan-shifter who we have yet to identify. The one who attacked us the day before you did.”

Levi glances away again, feigning a sliver of guilt. “Well, I’ll do what I can to try to help. I’m sure Hanji will have a field day prodding at me.”

Erwin hums his acknowledgement. “I appreciate your cooperation thus far,” he states. “I trust that when your memory does return, you will let me know.”

“Considering the other option is execution, I’m a little motivated to do so.”

Erwin offers a wry smile and stands up. “That’s all tonight, Levi. I’ll escort you back downstairs.”

Levi follows the Commander back to the cells from earlier. The idea of spending a full night in that place with damp walls and mould makes his skin crawl, and he just hopes that he won’t have to spend too long down here. 

Erwin doesn’t shackle him for the night again, although he does lock the cell door behind him. He leaves, offering a goodnight to Levi and then returning to his own office. The light in the hallway turns to a weak sliver as the door shuts and, save for the light of a few low-burning candles, Levi is left in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them!


	3. Chapter 3

Levi has never particularly liked the dark, nor has he ever liked dirt or germs. That is to say, he does not sleep well that night in the cell - he does not sleep at all. The steady drip of water falling from some crack in the ceiling and splashing into a small puddle makes him flinch each time it happens, as if it is some enormous, ground-shaking sound, like a bomb exploding or a gunshot popping by his ear. It drives into his skull the exact same.

Night passes slowly and he can see the sun begin to rise through the thin window in the cell. Not long after its rise, the door in the hallway opens and a single set of footsteps echoes down the hall. Mike comes into view, and he balances a tray of food on one hand as he unlocks the cell door without saying a word. He hands the tray to Levi on his cot.

“Breakfast. Then I’ll take you to the infirmary for your check-up.”

He eats slowly, as if he might be able to delay the inevitable. He hates medical. He hates doctors, and nurses, and hates being poked and prodded at. Even more so when it’s done by people who are, supposedly, devils. He can’t help the constant churn of anxiety in the back of his mind when they leave the dark cells and begin to walk through the HQ.

The corridors aren’t empty like they were last night and people stare openly at Levi when they walk past. A few people murmur greetings or acknowledgements to Mike as they pass him, which Mike often responds with a nod or a grunt of his own.

The infirmary is a small room on the ground floor with a fair few beds and lots of medical equipment, some of which Levi recognises to be more primitive versions of what he’s used to. There are a couple of people on the beds, one awake and eating breakfast and one still asleep. He assumes the rest of the casualties from Annie’s attack have been transported to a better hospital elsewhere in the Walls. 

There are two nurses in the room. They seem to expect Levi, though he can’t quite tell what they’ve been told about him - whether they know he is a titan-shifter who attacked them only yesterday morning. 

The check-up, much to Levi’s pleasure, seems to be pretty standard. They ask his age - he pretends not to know - and measure his height and weight, as well as taking other measurements Levi assumes are for a better fitting uniform. Nothing surprising comes back from the check-up; they assume his age is somewhere from mid to late twenties (not far off it), he doesn’t seem to have any injuries, old or new; they draw some conclusions about malnutrition, the lingering effects from his childhood showing themselves in his height and pallor. Otherwise, he is fine, they get their measurements, and they move on quickly.

Mike, who had stood off to the side quietly for the whole thing, pushes himself off the wall when Levi is done and then jerks his head to the door, a sign for him to follow him out.

“I’ll give you a quick tour of the place, and then I’ll bring you to Hanji’s lab. You’ll be working with her today.”

“The crazy scientist,” Levi comments. Mike spares him only a brief glance.

“I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of your place here.”

“I think I get it,” mutters Levi, pinching his uniform jacket with disdain. 

Mike’s tour of the place only helps clear things up a little. He shows him the mess-hall, where most of the actual scouts are finishing up their breakfast; he shows him the showers and toilets again, shows him the Commander’s office again as well as Hanji’s, since he’ll be working with her. He shows him the library and the gym, and then takes him outside to show him the courtyard, the stables, and, in the distance, their training forest. 

As they walk around, Levi tries to catch sight of anyone he might recognise - Reiner, Bertholdt, or anyone they had described to him - but no one stands out to him, and he is brought back to Hanji’s lab with a vague sense of disappointment.

Mike knocks on the door and then swings it open, walking Levi inside to reveal a room full of clutter; tables are covered in paper, test tubes, microscopes, drawings, maps, and seemingly random things like rocks and random tools. There are multiple chalkboards covered in different notes and drawings. In the room is a man, leaning against a table with a tired expression, and at the other end of the room is Hanji, who hasn’t yet noticed their arrival.

“Hanji,” says the man, slouching. “Hanji, Mike and Levi are here -  _ Hanji- _ ”

“And just look at the results!” She cries, jabbing a finger at a chalkboard. “Do you have any idea what this means, Moblit? Can you even comprehend this?”

“ _ Hanji,  _ please,” says the man, Moblit, and he throws them an apologetic look. 

“Erwin owes me twenty bucks!” Hanji exclaims, spinning around. Her eyes fall on Moblit, and then jump to him and Mike. Levi expects her to falter a little, or at least look awkward, but she just brightens up even more. “Levi! Good morning!”

“Good… morning,” he replies, brows knitting together. Hanji strides forwards, waving her hand.

“Thanks, Mike, I’ll take him out of your hands from here.”

“Come find me if you need anything,” he says, and then slips out of the room, closing the door behind him. Hanji claps a hand down onto Levi’s shoulder.

“I hope you slept well - I know the cells can be a little unwelcoming, but I’m sure you understand where we’re coming from. And anyway, I doubt it’ll be long before you’re moved to a better room. Oh, you don’t understand how excited I am to get to work with you, Levi!”

Levi grunts his acknowledgement, glancing around the room and at all of her notes and drawings. Many seem to be of titans. He can recognise some notes on titan healing, and some notes on titan-shifting, which he can only presume she got from Eren. They don’t seem to know much, which he supposes is a good thing for him.

She’ll want to know more. Telling her new information would be a good way to get her to trust him, but it could lead to a future disadvantage. However, this was a risk he had already thought of and deemed necessary. They would gain information on his titan form that no doubt would give him a disadvantage in the future. Levi just hopes that he can play it in such a way that he hardly gives away any new information. He has no plans of showing off his titan power, and he’ll have to figure out where the Survey Corps stand with their current information so he doesn’t let them in on much more.

At the least the details of Reiner, Bertholdt and Annie’s titans would remain a secret, and they were built more for fighting than he was.

“I assume you’re going to want to dissect me and pick me apart, huh?” He says, only half-joking. He follows Hanji deeper into the laboratory, making mental notes of everything he saw there.

“Only if I had the chance,” hums Hanji. Finally, she lets go of him and walks around the other side of the table they stopped by, plopping down onto a chair and resting her chin on her hands. “But first, we can just start with chatting. Sit, sit! We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

Tense, Levi takes a seat opposite her, folding one leg over the other. Hanji pulls a pen and a few scraps of paper in front of herself, licks the pen, and places it on the paper. At the top she writes his name and underlines it.

“Your titan looked to be around ten metres tall, but I didn’t get much of a good look at it. Does that sound right to you?”

Levi bobs his head in a simple nod. Hanji hums, scribbles down that information, then rubs her jaw. “Strange,” she says, looking him up and down. “I’ve been going under the impression that titans, at least in some part, reflect characteristics of their human form; then again, I only have Eren to go off of with that theory. And you, now.” She leans over the table suddenly, scrutinising his face for several moments before she sits back down. “And whilst you have the same hair and eye colour as your titan did, I would have thought your titan would have been somewhere around three to five metres.”

“Maybe your theory is just wrong,” Levi scoffs, folding his arms across his chest. He has no doubt that had he been a pure titan that would probably be the case; but he’s not a pure titan. Ten metres had been a good size whilst he was out in the forest and a good size to keep up with following the Survey Corps during their retreat. A smaller titan might have made him less intimidating and might have made the lack of sound he made more believable, but he hadn’t exactly wanted to appear less intimidating to these people. 

He wonders if the reveal of that titan power would end up backfiring for him later, but he can’t imagine it. If anything, it might make them more wary of other shifters, if they believed they could choose their own height with each transformations, within reason - ten metres was about as tall as he could make his titan without using an excess of energy that would take its toll on him, though even that pushed it - and it’s not as if they would be able to predict his height every time he shifted. 

Hanji laughs, but it sounds more like a cackle. “Maybe, maybe. Now, what else… ah! Your titan was  _ fast _ , Levi. You crept up on all of us and our horses couldn’t outrun you.” She pauses, eyes narrowing in thought. “You were rather slender, though. I guess the lack of muscle is made up for in speed, then. Do you think that impedes your ability to fight? Not with humans, I guess, but do you think you’d be overpowered by another titan in combat? The female titan managed to take out Eren with ease, but Eren doesn’t have much training in his titan form. Do you?”

Levi blinks, processing everything she had just said and asked. “I… guess so. I’ve not fought another titan, as far as I’m aware.”

“Mmm… perhaps we can have you and Eren spar, assuming you both won’t go crazy,” Hanji says, and scribbles the note down on her paper. “Speaking of - you say you don’t have memory of the attack, and you don’t have any intentions to attack us, either. You said that the only thing you could remember was a titan scream, and it was like it woke you up;  _ cut right through a dream _ .”

“That’s what it felt like,” Levi confirms, bobbing his head. 

“When we caught the female titan, she had nowhere to go. Erwin was just about to cut her out of her nape when she screamed, attracting tons of titans that devoured her titan form - I’m positive she got out of there, I don’t believe that she would have called them just to eat her. The next day, you reached us and attacked us. I’m wondering if her scream can control titans and, apparently, titan-shifters.” She seems to be talking more to herself than to Levi, so he stays quiet and lets her muse on her own thoughts for a while, offering nothing more than a shrug.

“Oh well. I’m sure we’ll figure that out the next time we fight her. It would be terribly bad luck for us if she could.”

“I can imagine,” Levi drawls, glancing around the place, and he tries not to think about the Founding Titan. “Who is Eren? You all keep mentioning him.”

“Eren Jaeger; a kid from our cadet corps,” Hanji says, leaning precariously on the edge of her chair. “He found out he was a titan during an attack where he was eaten, but he came back in his titan form. You’ll meet him soon, I’m sure, but I have ‘strict rules’ to not introduce you two yet, or to take you out for a test run in your titan form yet. How boring.”

“Oh?” Levi quirks an eyebrow. “Why not?”

“It’s only been, like, a day since your attack,” she points out. “We need to make sure you aren’t planning to eat us all first. Understandably.”

“Understandably.”

“Anywho, we can still do plenty until then. So, Levi, tell me about your titan.”

The day passes fairly slowly. Levi spends most of the day with Hanji in her lab, talking about his titan form. He gives her a good enough description that she makes a rough sketch of it, though she’s intrigued most of all by the way his fingers taper off into claws. Levi can virtually see her squirm with the need to prod at his actual titan form, but she manages to restrain herself and not go against the Commander’s orders. She speaks her thoughts aloud a lot, and Levi can’t quite tell if she’s talking to herself or to him. She rambles about how one becomes a titan-shifter, though she has no real ideas - at least none that she mentions to Levi. Hanji seems like an overly open person to him, but she’s smart. Levi doesn’t doubt it would be easy to think of Hanji as nothing more than a lunatic with a slight skill in science, and he tries to figure out what else there is to her but it’s like running in circles and he gives up.

He isn’t allowed to eat in the mess hall with the rest of the Survey Corps members yet, so he has both lunch and dinner with Hanji and Moblit in her lab. When he’s not talking with her about titans or letting her ricochet theories off of him, he finds himself doing random chores for her; helping her around the lab, cleaning up - not that he minds, her lab is a mess and it makes his skin crawl, so he’s more than happy to clean up what he can. There are certain areas she doesn’t allow him to mess with, even if it’s horrifically disorganised. Despite this, Hanji always seems to know where everything is.

“I don’t understand how you can work in this mess,” Levi says, suppressing a grimace. He eyes the petri dish stuck beneath a microscope and tries not to think about what is on it and how long it’s been there, or about the mould growing in his cell, or about how he’d just eaten both lunch and dinner close to it. 

“I know where everything is,” Hanji states, and as if to prove her point she stands up and stalks across the room and plucks a book out from a pile, holding it up to him. “Look.  _ History of the Scout Regiment _ \- you should probably read this. Or not.” She throws it back over her shoulder and Levi grimaces at the sound of the book thudding back onto the table. She crosses the room, coming to his side and sitting down. “It’s just some paper,  _ reeelaaax _ , Levi.”

Contradicting what she just told him to do, she leans against him, despite his attempts to shrug her off. Her glasses dig into his shoulder. “It’s a  _ mess, _ ” he says, inching away. “And get off me… shitty-glasses.”

Hanji cackles and sits up, probably so it’s easier for her to keep cackling. “Shitty-glasses!” She cries out, clapping her hands together. “Oh, that’s a new one! I love it!”

Hanji manages to fill several sheets of paper just from talking to him - with rough sketches of his titan, scribbled notes and theories. She seems to never run out of things to ask him or to talk about, and Levi struggles to keep up with most of it. He tries to look to Moblit for clarification but Moblit seems to just have gotten used to the scientist’s behaviour and only offers him a sheepish, half-apologetic smile. 

Hanji is half-way through explaining how far they’ve explored outside of the walls, pointing to a map covered in notes and scribbles, when there’s a knock at the door just before it slides open. The Commander steps inside, looks around, and then wanders a few steps closer to them all.

“Erwin,” Hanji coos in greeting. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Hanji,” he returns, nodding his head, “Moblit. Levi.”

Levi grunts his acknowledgement, glancing briefly at him. The Commander moved on quickly, walking through the room and to Hanji’s side. He looks curiously at all of the notes she’s taken, glances at Levi and then back at the notes.

“I’ve got plenty of stuff to think about,” Hanji states, shoving the notes closer to him. “And plenty of stuff to test out, whenever you let us.” She finishes her sentence with a half-pout, half-glare. Erwin doesn’t acknowledge that.

“You’ll have plenty of time soon enough.”

“So long as the female titan doesn’t come knocking on the walls,” Hanji mutters.

“I highly doubt she’d show herself close to the walls,” murmurs Erwin, turning a piece of paper around to look at the notes on the other side; the sketches of Levi’s titan with a mess of notes surrounding the drawings. “It will be good to have someone a little more… mature, in possession of the titan-shifting ability.”

“Eren not good enough?” Levi asks sarcastically. He shrugs a shoulder. “We’ll just have to see how well I can control it. Perhaps I’ll be even worse than the kid.”

Erwin eyes him for a moment. “Perhaps,” he agrees, looking back down at the notes. “I guess we’ll see.”

Hanji pushes a piece of paper towards Erwin and taps her pen on it absentmindedly. The Commander hums in thought, eyes narrowing a little, and then pushes it back to Hanji. “Keep it in mind,” he says. His eyes turn to Levi and he steps away from the table, closer to the door. “It’s curfew. I thought I’d come and escort you myself.”

“How polite of you,” Levi comments dryly. He pushes himself up onto his own feet and steps closer to him. 

“It was great working with you, Levi!” Hanji calls, despite only being a few feet away. “Thanks for everything you’ve told me today, I can’t wait to pick up on this later.”

“It was nice meeting you, Levi,” says Moblit, offering a small wave.

“Yeah. You too,” he utters, and then he turns and follows Erwin out of the lab. 

“I’m glad to see that you and Hanji are getting along and working well together,” Erwin says, voice pleasant.

“I’m pretty sure she’s planning how to dissect me as we speak.”

“Probably, but she knows she isn’t allowed to.”

“That’s really reassuring, Smith.”

The Commander offers him a wry smile. “You’ve given her a lot to think on. I appreciate your cooperation.”

“Well, that  _ is  _ what I said I’d do, isn’t it?” Levi questions, tipping his head to the side. “

“Of course,” says Erwin. “Still, thank you. I know you understand the reasons behind our precautions.”

“I get it. You all like to keep reminding me of it.”

“Tomorrow I’d like to start your training with our ODM-gear. Mike will oversee your training. I’d also like to see you in combat training. You’re in good shape and I’m interested to see if you have any combat experience.”

“One might think that being a ten-metre tall titan is more than enough,” Levi comments.

“Perhaps so, if you were going to fight and travel constantly in said titan form; which you won’t be.”

“You say ‘travel’ as if I’m going anywhere soon.”

Erwin eyes him. “You are a soldier of the Survey Corps now. You will be taking part in our expeditions and missions.”

“Your little trips out of the walls. What are you even trying to achieve? According to everything Hanji’s told me, you go on suicide missions in a titan-infested world.”

Erwin’s lips press together, eyes shifting forwards. “We’re trying to take that world back,” he says. “Our world. We’ve been trapped behind these walls for centuries, hiding from these monsters. We want our freedom back, and the Survey Corps are the ones fighting for it.”

Levi frowns, eyes narrowing a little. He wonders, not for the first time, what would happen if these people did figure out what lay beyond these walls; beyond this island. He’s never entirely sure of what the outcome would be like. He wonders if he wishes it were as Erwin thinks it is. 

The rest of the walk to the prison cells is spent in silence, save for the bustle of the other scouts around them. Those who pass by them spare them curious glances, and Levi assumes that Erwin hasn’t told anyone about Levi. He has to assume then that only those present for his titan attack know who he is and how he is here. It’s probably for the best.

It’s late, and most scouts seem to be finishing up chores, using their free time or retiring to their quarters; therefore, they pass many people in the hallways. Levi doesn’t pay any attention to any of them; not until they pass a door, one to the library, just as it opens, and the group coming out almost walk right into them. 

“Oh - oh, we’re sorry, Commander!” yelps a young voice. Erwin pauses for a moment, just to nod his acknowledgement at the group. 

“Don’t worry,” he tells the wide-eyed blond kid at the front of the group, cheeks flushing red. “Continue on your way.”

“Ah, yes, sir,” he stammers, and steps behind them. The rest of his little group follows behind, looking sheepishly at the Commander. They falter when they see Levi with him, though. They recognise him.

And Levi recognises two particular gazes on him. 

Reiner and Bertholdt look nearly shell-shocked as they look at him, as if they’d never seen him before. Levi is quick to look away, all too aware of the Commander standing right there, and quietly follows after him.

His cell is as unwelcoming as it always has been. The idea of sleeping in that place makes him thoroughly uncomfortable, makes his skin crawl, but the fatigue of yesterday’s sleepless night is beginning to wear down on him. 

“Thank you for your work today, Levi,” Erwin says, opening the cell door for him. Levi slips in and notices the folded uniform on his cot. Levi shrugs the thanks off and inspects the uniform. It looks much more his size than the one he’s wearing. 

“You should get some sleep,” Erwin tells him. “You’ll be busy tomorrow, and assuming your training goes well, for a long while after that.”

Levi puts the uniform down and turns to look at him. “Will you be at my training tomorrow?” He asks.

“If I can make it,” he says with a nod. “I do plan to, though.”

“Alright,” he says, bobbing his head in a nod. “Goodnight.”

Erwin offers him a polite smile. He steps back and closes the cell door between them; locks it. 

“Goodnight, Levi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Feel free to let me know your thoughts, I appreciate it!


End file.
